Wright: Don't panic after Opening Day

Kieran Darcy is an ESPNNewYork.com staff writer. He joined ESPN in August 2000 after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, where he played four years of JV basketball.
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NEW YORK -- The Mets' Opening Day loss to the Nationals was about as painful a loss as you can imagine. But Mets captain David Wright was calm and composed after the game.

"This is one game. There’s a lot of baseball left, a lot of games left," Wright said. "This isn’t gonna be an indication of how the season goes."

Wright performed well, going 3-for-5 with two singles and a two-run home run. But the Mets bullpen coughed up leads in both the seventh and ninth innings before the Nationals won it 9-7 in 10.

"Not a good day, obviously," Wright said. "It started out great, and anytime you get to Stephen Strasburg like that, get four [runs] off of him and you get him out of there after six [innings] or whatever it was, you need to capitalize on that and we didn’t do that."

General manager Sandy Alderson spoke to the media before the game, and reiterated that his goal for this team is to win 90 games.

"When Sandy first said it, you obviously take that as a compliment, that he has that sort of faith in his guys," Wright said. "You hear that, and as a player, it just kind of backs up the fact that mediocrity isn’t gonna be acceptable moving forward."

The Mets were in prime position to notch win No. 1 on the road to 90, before things went awry at the end.

"We gave this one away today. We flat-out gave it away," Wright said. "For us to accomplish what we want to accomplish, we’re not good enough to just be giving a game away."